Concerned about the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra took to Twitter and suggested “calibrated and selective unlocking” in regions where coronavirus cases are declining.
The industrialist shared a graph by American think-tank Pew Research Center on May 28, showing how the pandemic has financially affected Indians. According to the analysis, the pandemic may have shrunk India’s middle-class population by 32 million and driven an additional 75 million people below the poverty line in 2020.
The Pew Research report, based on an analysis of World Bank data, was published in March even before the second wave of COVID-19 hit the country.
The 66-year-old business tycoon called the financial impact of the pandemic a “harsh reality of lives vs livelihood” and said that “more lives will be ruined if economic activities continue to be frozen” due to coronavirus-enforced lockdown even if the restrictions had saved people's lives.